This week we have shared with you twoarticles that went through every Best Picture winner in the Academy Awards in the 1970s to determine which films get to keep their trophy, and which have to give them up to another film. How did we determine this? Hindsight and our own extremely arbitrary opinions, of course. Frankly, we were a bit surprised and disappointed that there wasn’t more chaos in reassigning the awards from the 70’s. Five movies kept their Oscars and with the exception of one year, the highest IMDB user rating came away with the revised award. Today, we continue our “oh shit, this is taking a lot more work than we expected when we pitched it” series by delving into the first half of the 1980s, year-by-year, with the expectation that the 1980s’ increase in film production quality (and, you know, cocaine) will lead to more insanity.

And here we again will remind you what to expect from this article. We list each year by the actual year of the Academy Award ceremony (meaning that for each year, we are talking about films released the prior year. The 1980 award, for example, covers only films that came out in 1979). We will also say what other films were nominated, and will show the IMDB user rating next to each film’s name. We are aware that IMDB users are not necessarily the most logical bunch, and the rating doesn’t necessarily dictate what films we choose, but it is a factor, albeit one of many. In some instances, we will have found that the Academy got it right the first time, but more often than not we’ll be giving the award to another film, be that film previously nominated or not.

So let’s dive in, nose first, to the 1980s and take away some hard-earned Oscars!